Budget showing negative for budgeted amount

LGMartin

I was playing around with a budget I had put together for 2020 and trying to figure out why loan transactions were not showing. Don't know what I did, but somewhere along the way the budgeted total amount went negative on some of the categories. For example, the budgeted amount for Auto & Transport for January shows -543 making the difference -999 when figuring in the 457 total for transactions made. The subcategories show positive numbers and do not add up to 543 positive or negative. If there are any hidden, I can't find them. Do I just need to delete and create a new budget? HAs anyone had this issue before or know what is causing it.

John_in_NC

Thanks for the update.

I suspect the source of your problem lies is whether or not you have the Parent Category selected in the edit budged mode. Selecting that will give you quite different results. For example:



If I check the parent category "Utilities", then I can set a goal for that amount regardless of sub categories totals. Examine the differences when you include/exclude the parent category. I suspect you might have the parent included when you might not wish to. When it is excluded, it will be a subtotal of only the sub categories you are tracking.

John_in_NC

For starters (and I don't know if this is your case), you will want all the values entered in the Budget (setup) as positive values. There was a strange use case (which slips my mind now, and I can't reproduce so it may be something that was resolved) that caused negative values to be populated. But, you will want them to be positive amounts, even if they are cash outflows.

You won't have to create a new budget, but simply change the values to being positive if you have such.

I don't know if the above addresses your issues. Also, the total of the sub categories will not necessarily total the parent category as you can categorize transactions as the Parent alone (with a separate budget goal). This trips some people up.

Take a look for negative budget goal amounts first, and we can go from there.

LGMartin

The budget goal amounts are positive numbers.

You mentioned the parent category does not necessarily total the sum of the subs. Is there a way to make it sum the subcategory goals? I may have unknowingly changed the budget goal for the parent when I was messing around with the the category settings. I don't know for sure, but I believe the parent goals were relatively close to the subcategory goals when I initially set it up.

John_in_NC

Thanks for the update.

I suspect the source of your problem lies is whether or not you have the Parent Category selected in the edit budged mode. Selecting that will give you quite different results. For example:



If I check the parent category "Utilities", then I can set a goal for that amount regardless of sub categories totals. Examine the differences when you include/exclude the parent category. I suspect you might have the parent included when you might not wish to. When it is excluded, it will be a subtotal of only the sub categories you are tracking.

LGMartin

That did the trick. Thanks for your assistance. Greatly appreciated.